Terror suspects' beards are safe now

The Miami Heraldby Carol RosenbergNovember 5, 2007

GUANTANAMO
BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Guards earlier this year stopped cutting the
beards off unruly war-on-terror detainees, according to the military,
confirming for the first time a practice that enraged Muslim captives
and their American advocates.

Prison commanders withdrew the policy
of ''beard trimming'' in May, said Army Col. Bill Costello, a spokesman
for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami.

From 2005, he said, it
had been an approved ``disciplinary action for severe physical assaults
against the guard force, to include the throwing of feces, urine,
semen, vomit, blood and/or saliva.''

But, he said, beard trimming
``was not designed as a religious punitive measure, nor was it ever
carried out by interrogation personnel.''

The issue cast a
spotlight on religious tensions behind the razor wire at the Pentagon's
showcase detention and interrogation center: Detainees and attorneys
have long protested policies they said were designed to humiliate
Muslim captives. The U.S. says its respects Islam while providing safe
and humane detention to allegedly dangerous al-Qaeda members and
sympathizers.

`BEARD SHORTENING'

''Some of
the beards are long -- you can hide a bazooka in there,'' Navy Capt.
Patrick McCarthy told reporters during an October visit by reporters in
which he defended what he called an earlier policy of ``beard
shortening.''

Countered New York attorney Martha Rayner, who
represents a Yemeni client named Sanad al Kazimi, 37, whose beard was
cut in October 2006, allegedly for throwing urine and feces at the
guards: ``They do it to humiliate. As punishment. It is how they truly
can humiliate a Muslim man -- shave his beard.''

Beard-cutting
has long been controversial at the Guantánamo prison camps, which
opened in January 2002 to detain and interrogate war-on-terror captives
scooped up around the globe and airlifted to Cuba from Afghanistan.
Captives arrived at Camp X-Ray clean-shaven and their hair shorn from
their heads for health reasons, according to commanders.

Soon,
tours for reporters and visiting business leaders pointed to captives'
long, flowing beards as proof of respect for their religious
identities. The tours also showcase a range of Muslim amenities -- halal food, prayer beads and rugs -- as well as Korans in a variety of languages.

Captives
countered, through their lawyers, that they so feared their guards
would defile their Korans that some returned them to commanders rather
than leave them behind in their cells when they went to recreation or
attorney meetings.

During a recent media tour, the military said that about 90 of the roughly 330 detainees had returned their Korans.

Meanwhile,
the military denies that the guards ever shaved off a captive's beard
entirely as part of its disciplinary measures for ''non-compliant
detainees who assaulted the guard force'' and ``may have had their
beards trimmed because it represented a threat to the operation of a
safe and humane detention facility.''

Added Costello: ``Beards were trimmed to within inches, not clean-shaven.''

DETAINEES CAN SHAVE

But he said detainees can shave themselves entirely, if they want, during their shower periods.

Veteran
Guantánamo attorney Clive Stafford Smith said one of his youngest
clients -- Mohammed Gharani, 18, of Chad -- was punished by having his
first beard completely shaved off in February.

High-value captive
Majid Khan protested that Guantánamo guards shackled him and shaved off
his beard for refusing to return his breakfast tray on Nov. 15, 2006.

Khan
is a 1999 suburban Baltimore high school graduate who was seized in
Pakistan and held for years in secret CIA detention. Although the U.S.
alleges he plotted unrealized attacks on U.S. gas stations and water
reservoirs, he has not been charged with a crime.

He told the
panel he was so upset by his treatment at Guantánamo that he twice
tried to commit suicide by gnawing through arteries in his arm.

''They
just came in with eight guards and took me to main rec and forcibly
shaved my beard to humiliate me and offend my religion,'' he told a
panel of military officers April 15. ``While they were shaving my
beard, the female Navy head psychiatrist was watching the whole thing.''

Navy
Adm. James Stavridis, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, ended the
policy in May in consultation with detention center commanders,
Costello said.

He declined to say why, and whether the admiral received a specific protest.

NAZI COMPARISON

Earlier
this year, Washington attorney David Remes circulated a Holocaust-era
photo of a Nazi cutting a Jew's beard, and likened it to the Guantánamo
policy.

''I don't think that anyone who is doing this [at Guantánamo] understands the historical association,'' he said.

Captives
claim the military magnified their humiliation by videotaping the
beard-cutting. The military declined a Herald request for a copy, and
would not allow a Herald reporter to view one.

Detainees' lawyers
said the policy had waned for a while and then saw a resurgence after
the command staff was rattled by clashes between detainees and guards
in the most lenient camp on the base, which the military cast as a
foiled uprising.